Making the Superego Enjoy in Calvino's

Robert A. Rushing “TUTTO È ZUPPA!”: MAKING THE SUPEREGO ENJOY IN CALVINO’S IL CAVALIERE INESISTENTE The Hollow Epic Il cavaliere inesistente [The Nonexistent Knight] tells the story of Agilulfo, one of the Emperor Charlemagne’s most dedicated knights. He is scrupulous in all things, from the procedures and rules governing combat to the polishing of his armor. It is, in fact, his armor that particularly attracts the Emperor’s attention. It is completely unscratched or marred in any way and covers Agil- ulfo from head to toe—no space, no matter how small, is left uncovered. It is also perfectly white, except for a thin black line that runs around the edge. In other words, it is an outline, a tracing of a knight more than an actual knight as such. Agilulfo’s shield is rather curious as well. It depicts a cloak whose sides have been pulled open to reveal another cloak, whose sides have been pulled open to reveal another cloak, whose—in short, it is the fgure known as a mise en abyme, the endlessly recursive image of a container that contains itself and so contains ultimately nothing. The question of content, in short, is always deferred to a later date, farther down. If Charlemagne is struck by Agilulfo’s armor, he is decidedly more struck when he fnally convinces the reluctant knight to open his helmet: there is nothing inside. Agilulfo, the nonexistent knight, is merely a suit of armor animated by, as he says to the Emperor, “la forza di volontà . e la fede nella nostra santa causa” [strength of will and faith in our holy cause!].1 We can see immediately some of the uses to which Calvino might (and generally does) put this fgure. In the meta- literary vein, Agilulfo represents a kind of pure formalism, a temptation that Calvino was certainly drawn to throughout his career, as a number of critics have pointed out.2 Surely this hollowed out form, evacuated of content, 1. Italo Calvino, Il cavaliere inesistente in Romanzi e racconti, vol. 1 (Milan: Monda- dori, 1991) 958. Further references will be given in the text. 2. Isn’t this precisely what Calvino has understood so well about Ariosto, that Or- lando furioso is effectively an empty (delightful, magnifcent) formalism? The space of the poem functions like a game board, where the individual pieces have no individual The Romanic Review Volume 101 Number 3 © The Trustees of Columbia University 562 Robert A. Rushing also speaks to what happens to the epic in the modern era, where it becomes a genre that can no longer be taken seriously; it survives more as a generic memory, a space that can no longer contain anything. Certainly Calvino’s knight speaks as well to a certain loss of idealism, a desire for “strength of will and faith in our holy cause” that is no longer credible in an age of cynicism. What emerges from this overview is that Agilulfo appears as a fgure of nos- talgia; he is fundamentally anachronistic and out of place. This is particularly true for the other knights within the novel, for whom Agilulfo is “certo un modello di soldato; ma a tutti . antipatico” (Calvino 959) [certainly a model soldier; but disliked by all]. Under this view, the novel appears like a version of or an homage to Don Quixote: the tragicomic failure of idealism in a modern era of unabated cynicism and the concomitant impossibility of a serious (i.e., nonparodic) treat- ment of the epic and of the chivalric epic in particular. Such a view of the novel is bolstered by the various Quixotic elements of the text: Agilulfo’s irritating and impractical insistence on the laws of chivalry and codes of knightly behav- ior; his ridiculous squire who is, like Sancho Panza, rather more interested in the pleasures of the body than knightly virtue; the ironic and self-conscious narrator who is eventually enfolded into the narrative; the protagonist moti- vated by an absurd raison d’être and who effectively disintegrates when that reason is taken away, and so on. If it was not possible to take the ideals of chivalric literature (say, Orlando furioso) seriously at the beginning of the sev- enteenth century, it is surely impossible in the middle of the twentieth century. This is not quite, however, the story that Calvino’s novel tells. Agilulfo is not a marginalized and mocked fgure because he clings to outmoded ideals or an outmoded literary genre. In fact, it is often precisely the reverse: as they character; the spirit of the game resides in their continuous shifting from one space to another, their constant reconfguration. It is irrelevant whether we are talking about a magic horn, a magic ring, or a magic sword or helmet—what matters is that the objects be continuously exchanged among all the characters. Likewise, what matters the romance between two characters? What is important is that every romantic at- tachment be dissolved by a magic fountain, changed to hatred, then back into love, then love for another, and so on. As to Calvino’s penchant for pure formalism, critics as diverse as Guido Almansi (“Il mondo binario di Italo Calvino,” Paragone 258 (1971): 95–110), Paolo Briganti (“La vocazione combinatoria di Italo Calvino,” Studi e problemi di critica testuale 24 (1982): 199–225), Simona Wright (“Italo Calvino e la ricerca dell’ordine nella molteplicità,” Italian Quarterly 129 (1996): 59–76), Simonetta Noé (“La parola ordinatrice: Italo Calvino da ‘Le cosmicomiche’ a ‘Le città invisibili’” Il cristallo 1 (1982): 79–98), and Grazia Bravetti (“Italo Calvino: dal ‘labirinto’ alla ricerca dell’ordine nella ragione,” Il cristallo 3 (1983): 63–70) have all made this point. The Superego in Calvino’s IL CAVALIERE INESISTENTE 563 sit around the table at the end of the day, it is the other knights who tell epic stories of adventure, such as the following: Dice Orlando: – Devo dire che la battaglia d’Aspromonte si stava mettendo male, prima che io non abbattessi in duello il re Agolante e gli prendessi la Durlindana. C’era tanto attaccato che quando gli troncai di netto il braccio destro, il suo pugno restò stretto all’elsa di Durlindana e dovetti usare le tenaglie per staccarlo. (Calvino 1012) Orlando speaks: “I have to say that the battle of Aspromonte was going pretty bad, before I beat King Agolant in a duel and took the sword Durlindana from him. He was so attached to it that when I chopped off his right arm in one blow, his fst stayed tight around Durlindana’s hilt, and I had to use pliers to get it off!” Agilulfo fails to properly respond to these epic tales. He fails to respond in a similarly epic key with, say, an attempt to out- do Orlando’s story of impressive deeds or a humorous put-down aimed at Orlando. What Agilulfo is mocked, even detested for, is a very different kind of response to the epic magnitude of Orlando’s claim: E Agilulfo: – Non per smentirti, ma esattezza vuole che Durlin- dana fosse consegnata dai nemici nelle trattative d’armistizio cin- que giorni dopo la battaglia d’Aspromonte. Essa fgura infatti in un elenco d’armi leggere cedute all’esercito franco, tra le condizioni del trattato. (Calvino 1012) And Agilulfo: “Not to contradict you, but exactitude requires that we specify that Durlindana was consigned by our enemies in the armistice negotiations fve days after the battle of Aspromonte. Indeed, it is numbered among a list of light arms ceded to the army of the Franks, among the conditions of the treaty.” It is true that the epic tone has vanished from both interlocutors. Orlando’s speech is devoid of noble rhetoric, from his casual “it was going pretty bad” to his amusingly crude use of pliers to remove the amputated fst of King Agolant. Agilulfo’s discourse, on the contrary, while “higher,” is also in entirely bureaucratic language, in the particularly horrible Italian way that an English translation can only aspire to (Calvino loathingly referred to this kind of Italian as “anti- language,” and it is Agilulfo’s natural, although not exclusive, 564 Robert A. Rushing register in the novel).3 Nonetheless, Orlando still holds out the promise of great deeds, epic battles, heroism—epic magnitude if not epic quality. He may not be able to speak the language of the epic, and he may not even “really” believe in it anymore, but he certainly still enjoys it. Agilulfo, however, acts as the superego, an irritating censor, constantly seeking out mistakes, inaccura- cies, contradictions, always bringing to light the exaggerations of his com- rades, always exposing their stories as pretentious and empty boasts. Agilulfo’s function, what exposes him to the dislike and mockery of his companions, is to deprive the other knights of their enjoyment. What Agilulfo clings to, in other words, is not an outmoded literary genre or even anything so noble as ideals. When I mentioned before Agilulfo’s irritating and impractical insistence on the laws of chivalry, the key is that this insistence is not “impractical” as it is in the Quixote, where such codes typically impede forward movement of the plot or deny them some material gain—on the contrary, Agilulfo’s prohibitions and regulations make perfect sense (as, for instance, the conventions surrounding combat and revenge, which aim at a bureaucratization of war). Agilulfo is anachronistic because he continues to act as a censor, as an agent of prohibition—specifcally the prohibition of enjoyment—in an age in which unrestrained enjoyment becomes the para- mount value.

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